A modern application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) employs a complex power delivery network (PDN) to deliver electrical power to the active circuit elements on the IC die. One of the challenges when delivering electrical power to an integrated circuit die is that there are various capacitive couplings between the printed circuit board (PCB) and the circuit package, and between the circuit package and the circuit die. A primary problem is determining and controlling the transfer of noise from the PCB to the die over the power delivery network.
Previous solutions for determining the amount of noise transferred from a PCB to a circuit die included modifying the system under test by removing bypass capacitors or by using high power radio frequency (RF) amplifiers to drive the power delivery network so as to couple sufficient energy into the PDN to allow and observe perturbation of the on-die PDN. Unfortunately, these solutions have the unwanted effect of altering the impedance of the power delivery network, thereby skewing any measurements.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a way of determining the effects of the power delivery network of an integrated circuit die that overcomes the above-mentioned shortcomings.